D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[Hussar]

Of course, a simple fix is to fix this HUGE problem:

Take the beyond classic Mundane vs Magic:

Player "Flying monsters? My mundane pure melee warrior has no ranged attacks? So what do I do for the whole battle?"

DM-"Sucks to be you. Mundane characters suck. Just sit back, do nothing and be quiet while the magic characters play."

VS

Mundane Player: "Humm..wonder if we will EVER encounter something like an anti magic area?'

DM-"ABSOULUTELY NOT! NEVER! It would be SO WRONG to force the player of a magic using character to EVER just sit back and do nothing even for just one round. Er..um...oh, I mean anti-magic is super rare."

Mundane Player ".........

Yeah, but that's not really a fair comparison.

A flying monster is pretty common at any level. There's LOTS of stuff that can fly. Or heck, even climb well. I doubt there's a single CR from 1-20 that doesn't have at least one critter that can fly.

OTOH, creating an anti-magic zone is a pretty obvious DM thing. It's the DM very clearly giving the casters a giant middle finger. There's not that many things that can actually create an anti-magic zone. Heck, the number of baddies that can either counterspell or even dispel magic is very, very slim on the ground. Sure, legendary creatures have legendary resistances, but, there's so many ways around that - summonings and the like, plus, many spells still do damage on a miss errr... sorry, damage on a successful save.

Anti-magic is, honestly, super rare. That's an 8th level spell. Not really something your 5th level party should be bumping into every day.

 

[Yaarel]

Anti-magic is, honestly, super rare. That's an 8th level spell. Not really something your 5th level party should be bumping into every day.

Plus the Antimagic Field spell negates ones own magic. Heh, only an idiot caster character would cast such a spell, or else a truly bizarre situational circumstance, or a really vindictive enemy character (or a really vindictive DM playing the character).

I have never seen that spell cast in 5e.

The only antimagic zones I have seen are premade rooms or small areas, where I suppose it functions more like a trap encounter.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Kinda shoots the whole "Fighters deal as much damage as everyone else" argument in the foot there doesn't it? Considering according to the stats posted, Percy deals like the least damage in the group?

Hardly. He did the most damage in a single turn. Ditch the misfire rate, and he’d probably be higher on the campaign total and average, as well.

The Gunslinger is just a bad subclass.

But, like I said, I have no idea who all these people are playing fighters. I really don't. I'd LOVE to be in these groups that didn't play 99% casters. It's endlessly frustrating to me that every time I play D&D, it's so strongly dominated by casters. Again, in my experience. This is what is happening at the tables I play at. I'm not trying to say that this happens at other people's tables. But, I just started a totally new group recently, totally new characters. 2 Rogues, a sorcerer, a monk and a bard. Not a fighter in sight. New Spelljammer campaign just started with my long term group. Five characters, 7th level start, zero fighters. One shot played last week. YAY! Got one fighter. First single classed fighter I'd seen in years.

I dunno who's playing all those fighters but it certainly isn't my table.

I can hardly imagine. I wish I could have convince my buddy to build his airship Captain and intelligence officer as something other than an Eldritch Knight. He tends to forget that he can make an attack as a bonus action after using a cantrip, just for a start.

I have considered playing a Battlemaster as a swashbuckler but…I’m the kind of guy who chooses what class to play in a new system by checking who gets the most skills. I just can’t do it.

I even love the improvisation heavy gameplay that simple characters can encourage, I just want to succeed at skill rolls a lot while doing it.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yeah, but that's not really a fair comparison.

A flying monster is pretty common at any level. There's LOTS of stuff that can fly. Or heck, even climb well. I doubt there's a single CR from 1-20 that doesn't have at least one critter that can fly.

OTOH, creating an anti-magic zone is a pretty obvious DM thing. It's the DM very clearly giving the casters a giant middle finger. There's not that many things that can actually create an anti-magic zone. Heck, the number of baddies that can either counterspell or even dispel magic is very, very slim on the ground. Sure, legendary creatures have legendary resistances, but, there's so many ways around that - summonings and the like, plus, many spells still do damage on a miss errr... sorry, damage on a successful save.

Anti-magic is, honestly, super rare. That's an 8th level spell. Not really something your 5th level party should be bumping into every day.

I don't know. I feel like it's one of those things where the system and fiction are in conflict.

In a setting where D&D type magic is any kind of common, it'd be reasonable to expect countermeasures to magic to come up with some regularity. How regular I don't know, but I'm not sure how much more of a "middle finger" it really is than baddies that lock their doors at night, or places that have patrolling guards keeping lookout.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

How regular I don't know, but I'm not sure how much more of a "middle finger" it really is than baddies that lock their doors at night, or places that have patrolling guards keeping lookout.

i mean - you can get through a locked door or past a guard patrol on lookout. you can't really do anything about an anti-magic zone except leave it or remove it, and...well, removing it is kind of a problem when the only (current, anyway) way to remove it is with the thing it specifically prevents.

perhaps what might fit better is a zone that increases the level of slot a given spell requires to be cast. so, say, you need to spend a 1st level slot to just cast a cantrip, or a 3rd level slot to cast a 2nd level spell at 2nd level. it makes it harder to work with spells due to requiring more expensive resources, but not necessarily impossible, and has some built-in flavour of overcoming the field with additional effort.

 

[Hussar]

Hardly. He did the most damage in a single turn. Ditch the misfire rate, and he’d probably be higher on the campaign total and average, as well.

The Gunslinger is just a bad subclass.

I can hardly imagine. I wish I could have convince my buddy to build his airship Captain and intelligence officer as something other than an Eldritch Knight. He tends to forget that he can make an attack as a bonus action after using a cantrip, just for a start.

I have considered playing a Battlemaster as a swashbuckler but…I’m the kind of guy who chooses what class to play in a new system by checking who gets the most skills. I just can’t do it.

I even love the improvisation heavy gameplay that simple characters can encourage, I just want to succeed at skill rolls a lot while doing it.

Again, I'm going by the stats provided in this thread. He was not even in the top three of damage dealt. Not even close.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Just retire any real notion that the martial classes are nonmagical.

i agree with 99% of your post but this last line is a big hitch for me, and i don't know if it's just dissonance between your wordchoice for your point and my specific interpretation of it, but i don't agree that fighters need to be magical, i also don't think monks and barbarians are magical either (barring the specific subclasses that explicitly are like the eldritch knight is for the fighter), yes, all three of them they are fantastical but fantastical is not the same as magical and fantastical is no less potent than magical.

i think fighter, monk and barbarian are all mundane, what i mean by mundane is that there is no magic or otherwise explicitly supernatural force fueling their abilities, what i do not mean by mundane is that they are a sad ordinary 'human' constrained by the limits of the real world, the 'guy at the gym' as has been said, barbarian rage is just an especially potent adrenalline-rush, fight-or-flight state, Ki is just the name given to your natural bodily energies that you have learned to conciously harness, anyone can do these things because this is a fantasy world and everyone there has the potential to be more than in the real world.

i believe that every adventurer has a spark of potential that drives them to go beyond the limits of the masses, what i do not believe is that there also needs to be some kind of supernatural petrol for that spark to be turned into a blazing fire and anyone who doesn't use it will hit the glass ceiling of adventuring ability forever to be lesser than those that do.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

what i do not mean by mundane is that they are a sad ordinary 'human' constrained by the limits of the real world

Yet, that is what people think of when they think 'non-magical'... So it's impossible to sell to them that sword training makes you able to anime vanish through a line of foot soldiers who fall in your wake.

 

[Remathilis]

i agree with 99% of your post but this last line is a big hitch for me, and i don't know if it's just dissonance between your wordchoice for your point and my specific interpretation of it, but i don't agree that fighters need to be magical, i also don't think monks and barbarians are magical either (barring the specific subclasses that explicitly are like the eldritch knight is for the fighter), yes, all three of them they are fantastical but fantastical is not the same as magical and fantastical is no less potent than magical.

i think fighter, monk and barbarian are all mundane, what i mean by mundane is that there is no magic or otherwise explicitly supernatural force fueling their abilities, what i do not mean by mundane is that they are a sad ordinary 'human' constrained by the limits of the real world, the 'guy at the gym' as has been said, barbarian rage is just an especially potent adrenalline-rush, fight-or-flight state, Ki is just the name given to your natural bodily energies that you have learned to conciously harness, anyone can do these things because this is a fantasy world and everyone there has the potential to be more than in the real world.

i believe that every adventurer has a spark of potential that drives them to go beyond the limits of the masses, what i do not believe is that there also needs to be some kind of supernatural petrol for that spark to be turned into a blazing fire and anyone who doesn't use it will hit the glass ceiling of adventuring ability forever to be lesser than those that do.

No, I mean "magical" as the opposite of mundane. Capable of doing things that normal people in the real world cannot do. Fantastical, supernatural, whatever synonym you want to use. I don't find the monk mundane, and I feel the barbarian skirting the edge so hard it hurts. I also don't mean spellcasting, but I do mean things like walking though walls or channeling spirit energy through your sword.

Take the current fighter and its current subclasses. Now, remove the champion and battlemaster. What's left? Eldritch Knight (spells), arcane archer (magical artifice), rune knight (magic runes), psi-knight (psionics) and samurai (ki/spirit). You also have two lackluster knights aching for an upgrade. Now, let's replace them with a crusader (a knight with a scared calling, a bit like a paladin but more like a warlord in play) and a dragon knight (the martial equivalent to draconic sorcery) and then build into the main class features that call upon those unique powers (channel your power into your sword to gain energy damage dependent on your subclass or into your armor to gain a defensive ability). Your fighter now has a half-dozen supernatural origins for its magical powers. Spirit, magic, psionics, runes, magic blood, divine favor. Pick your origin. But "dude with sword" ain't cutting it for anything but an NPC.

 

[Remathilis]

Yet, that is what people think of when they think 'non-magical'... So it's impossible to sell to them that sword training makes you able to anime vanish through a line of foot soldiers who fall in your wake.

Just so. You cannot sell me on fantastical abilities with mundane origins. You can sell me on fantastical abilities with fantastical origins, or you're stuck with mundane abilities with mundane origins.